Fins

ObscureMe;
2013

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The early songs by the Connecticut punk band Fins sounded loose, sloppy, careening, joyful-- you know, like the Replacements. On their new, self-titled mini-LP, they've connected with Brooklyn noise-rock Svengali Ben Greenberg: As a result, they sound loose, sloppy, careening, serious—you know, like the Men. The Men's influence in the underground rock community has grown to a near-deafening peak, and Greenberg, through his work with bands like Sleepies, Pampers, and countless others, acts as its chief proselytizer. There is a minor mini-Albini effect to his studio presence: Bands that work with him don't necessarily come out sounding like the Men, but his touch tends to locate a certain something—a pile-driving, sweaty intensity.

At any rate, Fins sound surpassingly great right now, a thrillingly noisy three-piece finding their voice and footing. Under Greenberg's watch, their sound is more anchored and twice as explosive, a cathartic skid that doesn't match up point-for-point with any specific strain of punk. In a charmingly terrible local interviewtaped in a Connecticut basement, all three members mention Hüsker Dü and Rites of Spring (oh, and R.E.M.), but you can also hear Bleach-era Nirvana in the queasy sludge bass line that opens up "Passing". Their attack is nervy and excitable, hitting a cluster of potent feelings located all along the hardcore/punk/emo axis—triumph, anxiety, panic, exhilaration, defiance.

FINS register on first contact like a clawing blur, just like a punk tape should. Vocalist and lead guitarist John Lydon screams every word with knee-buckling intensity, and drummer Nate Sadowski belongs to my favorite school of punk drumming, that of the unerringly precise-wild-eyed flailer. But the longer you spend with the songs, the more they begin to slow down and breathe. In a scraped-raw power trio lineup like this, the instruments have to do a lot of economic work, and bassist Scott Bowers-DeFino might be their secret weapon. He imbues every scraping din with its melodic glint: His four-note riff on "Passing" might be the album's catchiest melody, and his bass lines on "Sockets" and "Branches" are those songs' chief hooks. If you're humming something from this record, in fact, there is a ninety-percent chance Bowers-DeFino played it.

It's unclear what Lydon is getting off his chest here without a lyric sheet, but it's pressingly obvious that it's life-or-death important to him. His scream has a little bit of Dylan Baldi's jagged, void-everything edge to it, and when he gets a hold of a good word, he shreds it to pieces —the word "suggestions" leaving his throat, on "Sockets," feels like it is carrying bits of internal organ out along with it. His euphoria feels real, and galvanizing, and it gets ahold of your fight-or-flight receptors. His neurochemical message is clear: He's vulnerable, he's invincible. Or, as he screams in a rare intelligible moment on "Shattered": "I'm standing upright/ I'm standing, alright/ I'm feeling shattered."